Get the game Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition for PC from Steam, Origin, etc?

Do any PVP, get invaded, or summon another player for multiplayer help in the game?

You should be careful then. There are people out there who are hacking and unfortunately, this can cause issues for YOU in the game.

Be weary of any of the multiplayer people that you summon that download hacks or trainers.

Some of these people actually kill friendly game NPC's (even though they shouldn't be able to).

A prime example is at Anor Londo where killing the illusion of Princess of Sunlight Gwynevere -- turns all of Anor Londo dark -- and makes members of the Darkmoon Covenant attack you there, as well as a hostile fire keeper. This is a big game changer that the player should only be able to do themself!

How do you protect yourself from all of this?

Well, you have two options.

Dark Souls: Prevent / Protect Against Hackers

1) Disable the online mode / multiplayer connection so that you are playing in offline mode2) Use a program to automatically backup your saved data

Both of these have their perks and trade offs. Method #1 keeps it from happening at all so you and your game are protected, but you lose the awesome multiplayer features of Dark Souls.

Method #2 though allows you to do multiplayer anyway, but also allows you to have a backup save file in case something goes wrong during multiplayer and you encounter someone who is trying to cheat or ruin your game. Plus it gives you a restore point if your saved data ever gets corrupted from the game crashing.

Pick your poison and watch out for glitchers, cheaters, hackers, and buggers. Patches may help with this in the future, but who knows. What we do know is this: this game rocks!